An emerging area of technology involving communication devices, also known as terminal devices, such as handheld devices, mobile phones, laptops, PDAs, internet appliances, non-mobile devices or other suitable device, is the application of multi-modal interactions for access to information and services. Typically resident on the terminal device is at least one browser, wherein the browser is an application or other mechanism which responds to fetch requests (entered by a user through an interface or from another device or application), receive fetched information, navigate through content servers via internal, e.g. intranet, or external, e.g. internet, connections, and present information to the user. The browser may be a graphical browser, voice browser, or any other suitable browser as recognized by one of ordinary skill in the art. Such browser may include but are not limited to J2ME applications, Java applications or any suitable mechanism.
Multi-modal technology allows a user to access information, such as voice, data, encrypted information, video, audio or other information, and services such as email, weather updates, bank transactions, and news through one or more browsers. More specifically, the user may submit an information fetch request in one or more modalities, such as speaking a fetch request into a microphone, and the user may then receive the fetched information in the first or a second mode, such as viewing the information on a display screen. Within the terminal device, the browser works in a manner similar to a standard web browser or other suitable application resident on a computer connected to a network or to other terminal devices.
As such, multimodal communication systems are being proposed that may allow users to utilize one or more input and output interfaces to facilitate communication in a plurality of modalities on a per session basis. For example, a user may wish to use a different modality in different circumstances. For example it may be desirable to input a request via a tactile interface on a communication device, such as a portable or non-portable device such as desktop units, hand held Internet appliances, mobile telephones, PDAs or any other suitable device in the form of text and receive retrieved information in an audio format such as voice. Specifying such input and output modality preferences each time a user is in a communication session can be time consuming and potentially complicated.
In addition, user profiles are known, such as stored software files, that may contain user information such as a user's preferences for a software application, contact information and, for example, a communication device's capabilities, such as whether or not the communication device can encrypt or decrypt information, and other capabilities. However, no user profiles are known which deal with multimodal communication systems.
Accordingly, a need exists for a multimodal apparatus and method that facilitates customization of input and output interface selection along with other desired multimodal preferences.